The Narrative Imperative of the Hero’s Journey

“The adventure they are ready for is the adventure they get.”

I have been dipping back into the video series, “The Power of Myth.” Released in 1988 a year after Joseph Campbell died, it features Campbell in six wide-ranging hour-long conversations with Bill Moyers.

It is truly wonderful.

In this video clip, Campbell references Star Wars several times.

I first studied Campbell’s seminal work “The Hero with a Thousand Faces” as an undergraduate at the University of Virginia as part of the Religious Studies honors program. Years later, when I broke into Hollywood as a screenwriter, I was shocked to see this academic book on the bookcases of studio and production executives. Then I learned of the connection with George Lucas:

…it came to me that there really was no modern use of mythology…so that’s when I started doing more strenuous research on fairy tales, folklore and mythology, and I started reading Joe’s books. Before that I hadn’t read any of Joe’s books…. It was very eerie because in reading “A Hero with a Thousand Faces,” I began to realize that my first draft of Star Wars was following classical motifs.

Indeed, five of the six hours of “The Power of Myth” series were recorded at Skywalker Ranch.

In the video above, Campbell makes this point about the hero’s journey:

This is a very interesting thing about these mythological themes. The achievement of the hero is one that he is ready for and it’s really a manifestation of his character. It’s amusing in the way that the landscape and the conditions of the environment matches the readiness of the hero. The adventure that he’s ready for is the one that he gets.

This quote reminds me of an observation by screenwriter Javier Grillo-Marxuach: “A great script creates an irresistible narrative flow that propels a reader to an inevitable dramatic conclusion.”

Years ago, when leading a writers workshop, I was attempting to describe this very same thing when I found myself saying these two words: Narrative Imperative. Apart from having a nice ring to it, the term gets at the essence of what Campbell and Grillo-Marxuach describe: The story which unfolds is precisely the journey the Protagonist must travel. It is the one they are destined to take, it is their narrative imperative.

In fact, when Campbell says, “the landscape and the conditions of the environment matches the readiness of the hero,” it is in my view more than amusing, it is downright revelatory in relation to the writing process. What it means is this:

The events which transpire in the plot… and the characters with whom the hero intersects… all serve and support that character’s transformation.

The hero is ready to change… and their change agents await them on the other side of FADE IN.

In Star Wars: Episodes IV-VI, we see Han Solo in his own protagonist’s journey evolve from a Trickster in A New Hope to an active part of the Rebel Alliance. As Campbell describes the character from the video clip featured above:

He was a very practical guy, a materialist in his character at least as he thought of himself. But he was a compassionate human being at the same time and didn’t know it. The adventure evoked a quality of his character that he hadn’t known he’d possessed. He thinks he’s an egoist, he really isn’t.

When Han Solo first intersects with Obi-Wan Kenobi and Luke Skywalker, he thinks he’s out for the money…

…but Han’s narrative imperative is to get in touch with his compassion and loyalty to what’s right which is where he ends up.

Those qualities which led Han to return and join the Rebel assault were there in his character all along. The adventure he got was the one he was prepared for, even if at first he didn’t realize it.

It was his narrative imperative.

Takeaway: When working with your story’s Protagonist and pondering what their Need is, think of it as their unconscious goal. The narrative you are crafting is the journey they must go on in order for their Need to emerge into the light of consciousness and transform them from an inauthentic existence into an authentic existence. Ask yourself: What is that hidden aspect of their psyche into which they are prepared to tap and for which their hero’s journey is laid out in front of them… their narrative imperative?

You may watch “The Power of Myth” here.